


where the streets have no name

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 02:22:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4461683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It occurs to him at some point, that he has unknowingly wanted it for many years — to get lost and never come back</p>
            </blockquote>





	where the streets have no name

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this pairing came from

His name is Clemenza Tirelli, he's approximately thirty-something years old, and his home is Genova, obviously. He works for that company which produces thermometers, has escaped to a business trip, and Coulson hates him (and watches too many gangster movies for his own good).

Despite the fact that he barely appears Italian, the cover has been serving him good for all four dull months that he's stuck in Moscow (yes, Coulson definitely hates him), doing the dirty spy job. It's far from being his favorite—he's a sniper, for fuck's sake, not a bloody James Bond—he's supposed to shoot things at crazy angles and blow up buildings just to piss off Coulson. Yet here he is—lazily strolling along the streets in a posh tuxedo and sweating his ass off, dry wind throwing dust at his face and late-spring heat getting under his skin. 

Sometimes he thinks it’s all too much here; the noise, cutting through massive concrete walls like they’re mere paper, the smells—lilacs, smoke, freshly painted curbs and god knows what else, and the people—always in a hurry, always indifferent, and never alike, an endless sea of them sweeping past him, never paying enough attention. He watches them, as he’d watch a target, absorbing every movement, every detail before aiming.

Here, he thinks, it would be so easy to get lost and never come back.

He is eyed suspiciously by stray dogs and cats that seem to materialize out of every basement, as he leaves the central streets and ducks into the welcoming evening shadow, clouds turning purple above his head and setting sun glinting in the windows. They say you shouldn’t look in them, since someone might as well look back at you—that being bad luck, according to Coulson.

One time, a red-haired woman does.

*

“Black Widow,” Coulson says via the comm.

“Figured as much,” Clint replies reluctantly. She’s not his mission—far from it, but he knows what will follow.

“Terminate her.”

*

Later, Clint feels like he’s seventeen all over again.

It’s getting close to +30 Celsius, the godforsaken attic of the block of flats they broke into three days ago smelling of pigeons and strong liquor. They are sprawled out on an old leather sofa, drinking themselves into oblivion and ignoring the whole wide world.

“Let’s just leave,” Clint slurs at some point, “They’ll think you’ve strangled me midfuck with your bare legs, or that we both’ve dropped dead ‘cause of the fuckin’ heat and alcohol poisoning.”

The Black Widow— _Natasha_ —looks like she’s considering strangling him right now.

“But ‘course we won’t be dead, we’ll just disappear,” he goes on, “We’ll go somewhere—to New Zealand or Australia, or to your fucking Siberia—I bet they’ll _never_ find us in Siberia, and we’ll have so much fun there—we'll troll the Chinese and shepherd the bears, and then we’ll freeze to death like that Captain America dude and Coulson’s gonna come and dig us outta the snow.”

Natasha pats his head in what would be a pitying manner and reaches for the fourth (fifth?) bottle. She’s perfect, Clint realizes then, deadly and beautiful and magnificent and cunning and _Russian_ , for fuck’s sake, with a load of issues matching his own, if not worse, her hair kissed by fire, green cat-like eyes twinkling with a knowing sly look and a smile that you’d follow to hell without a second thought.

He closes his eyes.

“You’re going to leave me here, aren’t you?”

“I will never do such a thing, Clint Barton,” she confesses in a mockingly serious tone, “You have my word,”

Clint keeps his eyes firmly shut in case she has her fingers crossed.

“Liar,” he says instead.

“You cannot prove,” she says and he hears a smile in her voice.

“Oh, don’t you worry; I’ll surely come up with something.”

“You are drunk, Barton, and you talk too much.”

“Right,” he agrees, “And you’re very quiet.”

She huffs.

“I’m simply waiting for your ass to get pissed enough to start spilling information about this SHIELD of yours.”

_“Liar,”_

“Well, a potential employee has to know everything about the company she’s about to work for,”

And at that, his eyes snap open. He twists his neck to give her an incredulous look.

“Oh, so now you don’t mind?”

Natasha shrugs.

“Someone needs to provide them with a detailed description of how _exactly_ you fucked up your mission, Hawkeye.”

And there he hoped that he wouldn’t have to bring up the subject for at least one more merry day of pretending that everything was alright.

“I hate you,” he grumbles, and she gives his an innocent look.

“What?” she asks, “Are you regretting not taking the shot?”

He chooses that moment to pass out.

*

Clint surprises everyone, himself included, and ends up not being kicked out. Coulson gives him the _look_ , the one that he keeps for the agents that get on his nerves, sighs, and sends him to Afghanistan for a month because he’s an asshole. When Clint comes back with sand in his eyes, lungs and under his fingernails, Natasha’s still suffering from all the paperwork SHIELD forces her through, filling forms and passing tests with an annoyed look. SHIELD is wary of her, and she’s wary of SHIELD, and she keeps close to Clint, following him around the base, a menacing dark shadow hot on his heels, assessing and calculating. She’s supposed to be supervised all the time, though she does a good job of messing with the agents’ heads and happily sneaks around on her own. She breaks into Fury’s office and the archives, rummages through all the files she can get her hands on, sometimes even joins Clint up in the ceiling vents, but is uncomfortable spending hours in closed space, and instead gets the habit of speaking to him through the ceiling.

Their first mission together is in St Petersburg—to deal with the double agents that give away more SHIELD information than necessary. The city is cold as fuck, being the early December, and as grey and miserable as his soul, with constant blizzards illuminated by bleak street lamps and ghosts from the glorious imperial times haunting the empty alleys. Clint feels someone staring, the heavy gaze burning holes in his spine, and when he turns—there’s no one, only buildings looming over him in the dark.

“Come on,” Nat says quietly, takes his hand and pulls him sideways, her eyes far away and almost nostalgic.

It happens again, twice, and he finds himself uneasy enough to start shooting arrows at nothing—he never does, but it’s a close thing. Needless to say, he’s very glad when the agents are over and done with.

*

He runs out of arrows on the outskirts of Odessa, having fallen from the cliff in a jeep, with a frantic scientist in the backseat and Natasha, still trying to regain control of the steering wheel even as the car tripped over the edge.

“Happens to everyone,” Coulson would comment later, “Otherwise you’d be in a Peter Jackson movie,”

There is a tall man with a freaky metal arm and a batman-like mask that covers most of his face, dressed in military uniform and armed with two rifles, and he follows them to the riverbank. Natasha lunges for the engineer, who appears to be at the verge of hysterics, and Clint dives back into the car, fishing for the guns that Nat always keeps under the driver’s seat. 

There is a shot, too loud for their deserted surroundings.

Natasha is definitely bleeding, and is almost confused by the fact, as she attempts to keep the now dead body of the engineer upright and looks at the approaching man with undisguised horror. The latter has arrows sticking out of his gut, and seems to be completely unbothered by it. Clint grabs Natasha’s hand and half-drags her away from the corpse. She gets the hint and crawls behind the jeep, gun in hand and already looking pale from the blood loss.

Clint fires, and the man falters, but he is already close enough to snatch the gun away. He breaks it with these crazy metal fingers and send Clint flying into the water, head slamming on the sharp rocks and frightened fish hurriedly swimming away. He is still seeing stars when he turns to find the man crouched near the engineer’s body and examining it. Clint risks looking sideways, and there’s Natasha, lying unconscious, her dingy hair covering the most of her face. Before he thinks of anything to do, that metal hand closes around his throat—and fucking hell, Clint thinks, this is definitely a death grip—and he’s roughly hauled up and looking straight into the face of his death. He doesn’t get to see a lot, since there is that awful mask, but the sight is depressing nonetheless.

He briefly wonders whether Coulson will be disappointed.

And all of a sudden the man lets go, and Clint slumps back into the river. He gets out a couple of seconds later, observing the rocks, baffled, and moves to Natasha. 

The man is nowhere to be seen.

*

Budapest is literally hell, and the mission costs him his hearing.

*

He has to stick the hearing aids into his ears first thing in the morning now and act like nothing’s changed at all. The device is fucking noticeable, and people keep _staring_ , and Clint would never admit it, but he feels horrible, overly exposed and even vulnerable, walking around like that. It’s a nuisance, he keeps telling Coulson, a fucking nuisance that he can manage, and yes, he’s perfectly capable of doing his job with fucking tubes in his ears, thank you very much.

Coulson usually smiles kindly in response and keeps his mouth shut just to be polite.

Clint never lets anyone see the discomfort, of course, but on some days Natasha abandons her silent and thoughtful brooding to patrol the vents with him and call him an idiot. She rarely talks to him these days, too lost in her troubling thoughts and memories she wouldn’t share, of the past on the other side of the iron curtain, where she has left the huge mirrors, fancy tutus, bandaged feet in third position and roaring audience. Clint knows at all too well—he’s also been on the receiving end of the applauds, he remembers it all—the quiet whiz of arrows, drunken singing, tigers watching him from behind the bars, warm wind whispering in the bright colourful tents, and the bearded woman laying a wet cloth on his forehead. She’d tell him stories in a soothing murmur that’d lull him to sleep, and he’d dream of perfect nothing.

Now he only dreams of gleaming metal hands and winters, long and severe, frost biting his cheeks and the breath of chilly wind hot and intimate on his damp skin.

Clint hates these dreams.

*

New Mexico is awfully, scorchingly hot, but yet nothing compared to the hell on Earth that Afghanistan once has been. Clint wishes he could just lock himself in the showers or at least fall face first into the fountain.

He hides in the temporary bliss of shadows, sunglasses on and leather suit clinging to his skin— _you’re on a mission, Barton, do behave or I’ll have you fired_ —and comes out when it’s mercifully dark. Nothing happens for two long and utterly boring weeks, and when Clint thinks that maybe losing the job doesn’t sound that bad, the raging heavens spread open and a giant hammer lands in the desert.

 _“Finally,”_ Clint says.

“This looks like a lot of paper work,” Coulson comments on the other end of the line.

“Does this mean I can fuck off back to New York, then?”

“No way, Barton. I’m not dealing with this shit on my own,”

The hammer doesn’t arrive alone—something, or more likely someone, according to Dr. Foster’s _borrowed_ data, falls out of the wormhole, ending up a few kilometers away from the alien hammer. They track the man—or whoever he is—down to the local hospital and then to Foster’s apartment. Before they get a chance to contact Fury and inform him about this new development, the man lets himself in at dusk, leaving a trail of passed out agents behind as he wrestles his way through the base, as if searching for—

“Barton,”

Clint doesn’t need to be told twice—he’s up and aiming before the words are out of Coulson’s mouth. The alien man is soaked with rain and covered in mud, and he sinks to his knees in front of the hammer he cannot lift, bellowing desperately at the thundering skies, a cry of a dying bear.

Clint relaxes his arms and lowers the bow, and the rain, blissful and ever so wonderful, patters his face, his cheeks growing numb from the chilly raindrops.

Coulson looks as bewildered as Clint feels. 

*

A few hours later, when they’re settled down and probably even more confused, someone attempts to pick up the hammer. If he didn’t know better, Clint would easily mistake the man for one of those straight-out-of-Harvard scientists, scattering all over the base like a colony of overgrown ants—but this man looks different, somehow, though he’s done a remarkable job of blending in. He’s tall and looking way too British, as if he’s from some BBC show—seriously, is that a freaking _scarf_ , in this weather—with long black hair and a posh suit Coulson would be jealous of.

Clint is sure as hell he hasn’t seen him before.

Then the man looks up, and Clint absently thinks that yes, definitely British and still weird, as he stares directly in his icy blue eyes. The man stares back, expression unreadable.

“Everything alright?” Coulson asks from behind.

Clint blinks and turns, then looks back in the direction of the hammer—and the man is gone.

*

Steve Rogers is everything Tony Stark is not, and they yell at each other like an old married couple. Clint fidgets with the bow and has to fight the urge to lodge arrows—the exploding ones—deep into their throats.

“Just wait,” Natasha says, as she gets ready for her new undercover mission somewhere in Russia, “And they will start a civil war.”

They are not a team, and it’s obvious to everyone except Coulson, who has gone too far with his grandiose plans and ideas, in Clint’s opinion, and Fury is too busy getting paranoid and suspecting everyone and everything to do something about it.

And then the Tesseract explodes like a fucking volcano and spits out that alien creature from New Mexico, the one that pretended to be a scientist, and _then_ Clint’s mind is frozen by some ancient magic, and he is no longer _his_ to control.

*

For days on end, all he sees is green, deep emerald green flashing in front of his eyes, guiding and ordering, as he sizes up targets, kills a dozen of people, most of them innocent, and doesn’t give a fuck about any of that. His arms jerk up, controlled by something that definitely isn’t him, and he slots arrows into his bow, and there’s a sensation that should terrify him, a sensation of something— _someone_ —looking through his eyes, controlling even his voice, smiling and whispering in the shadows.

There are times when Loki looks lost and uncertain, as if standing on the ruins of the shattered theatre, not sure which strings to pull. He looks startled, almost scared when Clint catches him doing just that.

“You know nothing,” Loki hisses, eyes dangerously narrowed.

Clint follows him to Germany, then back to New York, and almost blows up the Helicarrier, almost kills _Natasha_. That’s where everything comes back, memories of what he’s done, of blood he’s spilt and the lives he _hasn’t_ spared, crushing him like ocean waves, again and again.

“We weren’t trained for this,” Natasha says.

“It’s not your fault,” Natasha says.

“I will always be on your side,” Natasha says, clutching his hand, her eyes honest.

He wants to believe her, but he _remembers_ , and he’ll probably remember it till the end of his miserable existence, clear as a day, so he says nothing.

Coulson— _Phil_ —is dead.

*

The first thing Clint knows, after months of searching for the purpose of life at the bottom of whiskey bottles, is Natasha, unceremoniously dumping a basin of cold water on his head.

“You’re pathetic,” she says matter-of-factly and drags his sorry ass across the country.

There’s something like a team gathering—minus Thor who’s still in Asgard and plus Rhodey—and Clint thinks that he rather likes the guy.

They talk, they drink, they joke around and pretend that they’re very happy to be here now. Clint thinks it’s a rather poor attempt at team building, and wonders whether he should mention this to Coulson—and then he decides to pour himself some more, glaring at Natasha for good measure.

“Pepper dumped me,” Tony Stark announces after a while.

So, that’s what the whole commotion is about.

“I would’ve dumped you too, Stark,” Natasha says, smiling sweetly and Clint knows that at some point she did.

“Happens to everyone,” Rhodes says, clapping Stark on the back and looking like he is hiding a smile. Clint thinks that the last line used to be Coulson's and that he doesn't care about Pepper.

Banner stays silent, still pretending that he’s not there, Rhodes shakes his head, and Rogers, ever so perfect that it’s blinding, gives them all a look that makes you feel like a total piece of shit, not worthy of this world.

They are not a team—they are not even _friends_ , for goodness’s sake.

Later, he finds himself sitting beside Rogers, the latter looking at him with those sad earnest eyes. Clint already knows what he’s about to say—seriously, you can read the guy like an open book—and _hates_ him for that.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Rogers says and he must mean it—bloody hell, he’s Steve fucking Rogers, of course he means it—but Clint feels sick to the bones all the same. Coulson may have adored the Captain and collected those bloody cards, but Clint never did and doubts he will ever do.

“Yeah,” Stark comments out of nowhere, “He was annoying like shit, but I've always liked him better than Fury,” and because tonight’s all about him and his break up, he adds, “ _Pepper_ loved him, but I guess it’s kinda wrong to be jealous of a good dead man, so yeah, I’m shutting up now, Rogers, don’t look at me like that, Jesus,”

Stark does _not_ shut up—he flops on the sofa, squeezing in between them, and leans into Rogers, obviously very, very drunk, and tells him about Pepper and Killian and destroying all his Iron Man suits and that there’s no one left but JARVIS to complain to, and Rogers actually listens, his face sympathetic.

Clint leaves them to it, and goes to look for Natasha, who turns out to be with Banner, gazing at him with a strange expression on her face, one that he’s sure he has never seen on her before, while the good doctor rants about his scientific research. Therefore, Clint ends up with Rhodes, and at some point realizes that things will never be the same again.

*

Fury is facing away from him, as Clint enters his DC office. There’s a file on his desk, different from the ones he’s come across in SHIELD archives over the years. He wordlessly picks it up and makes a few very interesting discoveries—the file being old and in Russian, which he fortunately still remembers.

It dawns at him, then, why Coulson never spoke of that Odessa mission—unless it was necessary, of course—and suddenly wants to laugh, because his life must be a twisted and ugly version of some _Mission: Impossible_. He even lurks up in the vents like a fucking Tom Cruise.

Clint looks at the old photos, yellowed and dirty with age, and thinks that James Buchanan Barnes is too handsome to be simply dead.

“So, the Winter Soldier,” he states, “What do I do?”

Fury doesn’t look at him.

“You terminate him,” he says, and as Clint turns to leave, “Oh, no, not through the door. Captain Rogers is going to be here any minute, and he appears to be very mad,”

“Why I am not surprised,” Clint muses aloud as he stands in the center of the room, contemplating the ceiling. “Are you going to tell him?”

—that Hydra has wormed its way into the SHIELD and has been successfully eating it out for many years, that a supposedly dead war hero is not really dead, but alive and almost well, and has been made a legend, a ghost story that junior agents are scared of.

Predictably, Fury doesn’t say anything.

Clint leaves—and he doesn’t tell Natasha, assuming she already knows, because she _always_ does.

*

The Winter Soldier finds him himself, glass shattering and tires screeching, as Clint’s car hits another car, thus creating a traffic jam, and that freaky and all-too-familiar metal arm pulls him out effortlessly by the scruff of his neck. Then the Soldier throws him around like a rag doll with cold precision, and Clint runs three daggers into his person just to be cool.

That being done, the Winter Soldier stills.

“You’re not my mission,” he says, sounding put out and _wow_ —he can talk.

“Oh, really,” Clint says and spits a mouthful of blood in the direction of that ridiculous mask.

“But you’re an Avenger,” the Soldier goes on, speaking in that perfectly calm tone, as if he doesn’t have two goddamn knives in his chest and a third stuck in his arm and Clint pinned down in the middle of the fucking road with cars signaling around.

Yes, definitely _Mission: Impossible_.

“You’re their ally,” the Soldier concludes.

“No, I actually only come ‘round to fix the taps,” Clint replies, simultaneously feeling the fourth knife in his boot and ready so sprint into action at any moment now. This time, he thinks, he’ll go straight for the Soldier’s throat.

“The Captain,” the Soldier says after a moment, “And the Widow. Their locations, now”

“Fuck you,” Clint says and grabs the knife—but his arm is so inconveniently twisted that the movement slows down, and the blade only scratches the front of Soldier’s jacket, cutting it.

 _“Suka”_ the Soldier drawls and slams Clint’s head into asphalt as revenge.

Clint finds peace in blacking out.

*

He wakes up on the plane, hurting everywhere, to the muffled talks of Hydra agents—judging by the uniform—and pretends to be dead to the world, assessing the damage and eavesdropping on pure accident—it’s not his fault that the idiots have forgotten about his aids. They’re taking him to London, and Clint nearly blows the cover by bursting out laughing—he’s been avoiding the bloody L town like a plague, because that’s where Thor is busy fighting _elves_ , for fuck’s sake, and probably other shit from Tolkien books that Clint doesn’t feel like crossing paths with after Loki, but ends up being transported there anyway, because fate is evil.

(He’s not even sure where fate stands, after New Mexico and New York, given that Loki is—was?—a god, and Thor is a god, and there’s even an Allfather, and Clint himself is, according to Thor, ‘ _a dearest comrade_ ’—so, isn’t he supposed to have all the privileges? Apparently not)

Clint decides to slip into unconsciousness, when pain and exhaustion win over him, and deal with it later.

*

The Hydra agents in London must be smarter since they remove his aids, put him in a cell and his arm in a cast. They keep him on drugs and away from all the sharp objects, so he loses the track of time and swims in the uncertain blackness. There are thoughts on the edges of his poisoned brain, and he sometimes wonders, why SHIELD hasn’t retrieved him yet, and how long he is here, and what is the purpose of him being here, and where the hell Natasha is, and what is going on. He cannot even _hear_ what his guards talk about—when they happen to talk—but for a while they have seemed worried.

Clint wonders what that means.

Then the security breach occurs, thanks to Thor’s accurate landing, as he later finds out, and he uses the chance to escape. Light-headed and on wobbly legs, he gets to the safe house on the outskirts of London, discovers that they’ve kept him imprisoned for a month, watches the news, and thinks better of contacting SHIELD and Nat, praying to all gods that she’s alive.

*

“You’ve missed all the fun,” Natasha tells him, opening the door to Wilson’s apartment—Wilson and Rogers are currently on the hunt, chasing one particular ghost from the past, and Clint thinks he’s too tired to care.

He’s waited for a week—and arrived to find SHIELD rotten to the core, Fury dead-and-not-dead, ghost operating from Europe, while Phil Coulson, Phil mother-fucking Coulson, who’s been alive all this time and nobody has ever thought of telling him that because of the so-called 'questionable clearance' and 'personal attachment' issues, is in charge of what has remained of the organization, and Clint hates him with all his heart. They say the bastard's got a new team now, a bunch of some junior agents, but that's not his story to tell, not anymore.

Natasha’s taking a break from laying low in India, of all places, where she’s been keeping Dr. Banner company. And Clint understands why she’s fallen for him—and yes, she's done just that, no matter how hard she’s going to deny it—Banner perfectly fits the slightly-mad-scientist type, with his white lab coats, askew glasses, shaggy hair and moods that can crush and smash whenever he feels like it. When Nat talks about him, her face acquires that brave new expression, which softens her deadly sly features to such a sugary degree that he wants to throw up—because, seriously, she’s the _Black Widow_ —but mostly he’s honestly happy for her and maybe a little jealous, and he’ll sure as hell confront the green beast, if the latter doesn’t realize how lucky he actually is.

She’s going to return to India and stay with Banner, while Stark is rumored to be busy making new suits, Thor is happily reunited with Dr. Jane Foster, and their worse for wear looking team is officially independent now, on their own, but ready to act together if necessary. Maybe this is what Coulson originally had in mind when he came up with the Avengers Initiate but at this point Clint usually remembers that he’s mad at Coulson.

“I’ve found the Winter Soldier file in your car,” Natasha says suddenly and looks somewhat offended for a second, when he doesn’t elaborate—and it's not that she didn't know (she _knew_ , of course she did, she had probably known it before Fury assigned him with that bloody mission)—it's the fact that this time he didn't tell her willingly.

He questions himself when he’s started keeping secrets from her, after all those years, after they have walked through fire, water and Budapest together. He hasn't read her file yet (he never will), since he respects things that she doesn't tell him, and unlike her (and Tony), it isn't significant for him to know everything about everything. 

He just wants people to fucking stop _lying_ to him.

*

He and Natasha go their respective separate ways, and he happens to find himself exactly where he began. He remembers too late that there's no SHIELD—at least, not for him—no Fury and no _Coulson_ , thank you very much, and the Winter Soldier is not _his_ mission, but he's too lazy to go back to the States—there's nothing to come back to, as Nat is still in India and has other things to worry about. So he turns the last remaining Hydra bases inside out, steals the reports and discovers things that he wishes he knew nothing about. He has no idea why he does it, and what keeps him going, but he's too irrational to abandon it.

It occurs to him at some point, that he has unknowingly wanted it for many years—to get lost and never come back.

And as it turns out, he's not the only one.

*

It's nearly 11 am, and Clint is leaning against the wall—the one with ugly and very Soviet looking patterned wallpapers. He's sipping sweet tea with lemon that he hates, and reading _Hunger Games_ of all things, because apparently this is his life now.

He still doesn't want to get a dog—and he _won't_ give in.

It's nearly 11 am—and it's quiet, except for the sound of water running in the shower. The cold November sun is up, casting weak light on all the crappy furniture, fancy lamps, dying cactuses on windowsill and a dusty Persian rug that he's too sentimental to throw away (another reason why he doesn't want a dog—the beast is likely to tear the rug to pieces and happily eat it, and Clint isn't looking forward to cleaning its vomit afterwards). 

He hears something crash in the shower, and then there's Russian swearing. 

Clint thinks that if it were Natasha, nothing would've really changed—at least Nat would never insist on a dog, she'd want a cat, a fucking dozen of them.

He hasn't seen her for a year now, but Bruce tells Tony, and Tony tells Clint, when he calls to whine about Steve, Fury and the whole wide world, that she's fine, and Clint thinks he can live with the knowledge.

He's still on edge, part of him waiting for the world's end, for the new aliens, or mutants, or robots, or agents from the Hydra base that they've somehow missed, for a sniper shot from the nearby roof that will end him—but nothing happens.

And it scares him sometimes.

The water in the shower stops, and Clint dumps the shitty tea into the sink and puts the book away, thinking that he's lucky he's not the only one mental here.

The bathroom door creaks open, and he's embraced from behind, a smell of minty aftershave filling his nostrils.

“Still reading that crap?” James— _Bucky_ —says, nodding towards the book.

“It's not crap,” Clint admits, reluctant, “Made me reconsider a couple of things,”

Bucky hums.

“Interesting,” he says, stealing the mug and gulping down the remains of the tea.

It's then that Clint thinks that to hell with the rug, and decides that he actually doesn't mind a dog, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> English isn't my native language, so feel free to complain about grammar, punctuation, or too many Hunger Games references, and etc.


End file.
